---
title: Shopify collection sources: how the new collections model works
date: 2026-07-15
description: Shopify replaced smart and manual collections with collection sources. See what changed, what subcollections and variant targeting make possible, and what stays the same.
tags: ["Shopify","Collections","Guides"]
url: https://www.getaltera.com/blog/2026-07-15-shopify-collection-sources/
---


Shopify is rolling out the biggest change to collections in years. The split between smart collections and manual collections (or custom collections) is gone. In its place, every collection is built from one or more **collection sources**, and a single collection can mix automated rules, hand-picked products or variants, other collections, and product groups provided by apps.

> **A collection source is a building block that adds products or variants to a Shopify collection. Every collection is made of one or more sources.**

Each source can combine automated conditions, manually selected products, other collections, or app-provided product groups, and the collection contains the combined result.

This post covers what changed, what you can build now, what stays the same, and one thing to check in the apps that touch your collections.

---

## Smart and manual collections: the old model

Until now, a Shopify collection had to be one of two things:

- **Smart collections** (or automated collections) were defined by rules. "Vendor is Acme" or "price is less than $50", and Shopify kept the list of products up to date.
- **Manual collections** were a hand-picked list. You chose exactly which products belonged, one by one.

The choice was permanent, and you could never mix the two. If you wanted a rule-based collection plus three specific extra products, you were out of luck. The usual workaround was tagging products just to make them match a rule, which meant maintaining tags forever.

## What is a collection source?

Under the new model, a collection is a container for sources. Each source includes products or variants, and the collection holds the combined result. Shopify [announced this change](https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/introducing-the-new-collections-api) on June 17, 2026 in their Spring '26 Editions and started rolling out changes to stores on July 7, 2026.

A single source is already more capable than an old smart collection. One source can hold inclusion rules (matching any or all of them), manually selected products, and exclusion rules at the same time. So "everything under $100, except preorder items, plus these five products I picked" is now one collection with one source. No tags, no workarounds.

And a collection can have several sources. Each source is built independently, and the collection contains everything that any of its sources adds. Exclusions only apply within their own source. An exclusion removes items that its own source added, so if another source includes a product, the product stays in the collection.

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/editor-overview.jpg" alt="A Shopify collection built from three sources: a Products source with price conditions, a Collection source, and a Variants source with an inventory stock condition" caption="One collection built from three sources." >}}

## The four kinds of collection sources

There are four types of collection sources, and you can add a mix of them to build a single collection: **Products**, **Variants**, **Collection**, and **App**.

### Products

A Products source holds rules, a hand-picked list, or both at once. Conditions match on attributes like vendor, type, price, tag, category, inventory stock, and even metafields, and you control whether a product must match any condition or all of them. Next to the conditions you can add specific products, so "everything from this vendor, plus these five items" fits in one source.

A Products source can also carry **exclusions**: include everything matching X, but leave out anything matching Y. Exclusions can even target another collection, for example "exclude anything in my Preorder collection".

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/products-source.jpg" alt="A Products source in the Shopify collection editor including the Skiing and Snowboarding category and excluding the giftcard product type" caption="A Products source that includes a category and excludes gift cards." >}}

### Variants

A Variants source works the same way, but at the variant level: conditions, hand-picked variants, or both. This is what lets a collection contain the red variants of a product instead of the whole product. One difference from Products sources: there is no exclude option, so variant selection is inclusion-only.

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/variants-source.jpg" alt="A Variants source in the Shopify collection editor matching all conditions: category, inventory stock greater than 2, and active status" caption="A Variants source that only includes active variants with stock above 2." >}}

### Collection (subcollections)

A source can be another collection. This gives Shopify real, native **subcollections** for the first time. A parent "Sale" collection can include your "Summer sale" and "Clearance" collections as sources, and when those child collections change, the parent updates automatically.

Merchants have been asking for this for years. Every existing guide on Shopify subcollections tells you to fake the hierarchy with navigation menus, which only ever solved the menu layout, never which products the parent collection actually holds. That advice is now out of date.

One limit to be aware of: subcollections only go one level deep. A collection that already includes other collections cannot itself be added as a source, so you can build "Sale" out of "Summer sale" and "Clearance", but you cannot then put "Sale" inside a bigger parent.

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/collection-source.jpg" alt="A Collection source in the Shopify collection editor pulling from the Freestyle Snowboards and All-Mountain Snowboards collections" caption="A Snowboards collection built from two other collections." >}}

### App

Apps can publish their own sources and share them with your collections. An app that tracks bestsellers could publish a "Trending this week" source, and you attach it to any collection you like. The app keeps the source up to date and the changes flow into every collection that uses it. Only the app that owns a shared source can modify it, so the logic stays in one place.

## Collections can now contain variants

This is the change with the most direct merchandising value. A source can target variants instead of products, so a collection can contain only the red variants of your catalog for a Valentine's Day campaign, or only XS and XXL sizes for a clearance push.

This works with conditions as well as hand-picked lists. A "last chance" collection can use an inventory stock condition on a Variants source to include variants that are almost sold out. If the medium shirt is down to two units but the large has plenty of stock, only the medium shows up in the collection.

Before this, a product was either in a collection or it wasn't, and every variant came along with it. Variant targeting makes collection pages and filters match what you actually want to promote.

One limit to know about: variants can only be included, never excluded. A Variants source has no exclude option, and Products source exclusions work at the product level, so there is no way to exclude a single variant.

## The new collection editor

Shopify has also changed the collection pages in the admin to match this model. Instead of choosing a "collection type", the collection page now shows sources on the right where you configure each one: pick its type (Products, Variants, Collection, or App), then fill it with conditions, hand-picked items, or both. The collection items preview updates as you build, so you can see what ends up in the collection before saving.

The way products are displayed changed too. Collection items now default to a grid of thumbnails instead of a list (the list view is still there if you prefer it), and when the sort order is set to manual, you can drag and drop items to rearrange them.

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/collection-items-grid.jpg" alt="The collection items preview in the Shopify collection editor, showing products as a grid of thumbnails sorted manually" caption="Collection items now show up as a grid of thumbnails." >}}

## What doesn't change

The rollout is designed so existing stores keep working without any action.

- **Existing collections keep working.** Your current smart and manual collections carry over as collections with a single source. Nothing needs to be changed.
- **URLs and handles are untouched.** Collection pages keep their addresses.
- **Themes render collections the same way.** Storefront code that lists a collection's products keeps working. Variants render as product cards with just the matched variants included.
- **Sort order behaves the same.** One note: a collection has a single sort order across all of its sources, so you cannot sort each source separately.

## What this means for your theme

For most stores, nothing. Shopify made no Liquid changes for the new model, so themes keep rendering collections the same way, and products added by app sources come through like any others.

Variant collections are handled by the platform. The collection page shows product cards, not variant cards, and each card only shows the included variants: swatches, price ranges, and filters all reflect what the collection includes. If a collection includes two variants of the same product, they share one card. The product page itself is unchanged, so a customer who clicks through still sees every variant in the picker.

Two setups are worth checking. Themes with custom code that loops through a product's variants on collection cards (custom color swatches are the usual example) will keep showing every variant, because Liquid does not expose which variants a collection includes. And headless storefronts should check their API versions, since Storefront API support for reading sources and variant-level collections is still limited.

## Check the apps that touch your collections

There is one thing to watch out for. To understand the new collections, an app has to be updated for the version of Shopify's API released July 1, 2026 (version 2026-07). Apps that have not updated yet cannot understand these collections, so Shopify hides the collections from them completely. The app does not show an error. It just never sees the collection.

For import/export apps this is easy to miss. An app that has not updated will export what looks like a complete collections file while silently skipping every collection that uses the new features: multiple sources, exclusions, subcollections, variant-level collections, or an app-provided source. The same applies to any app that syncs, renders, or checks which products are in a collection.

So before you start building with sources, check whether the apps you rely on have announced support for the new collections model. [Altera](https://apps.shopify.com/altera-import-export-excel?utm_source=getaltera.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=collection-sources) already supports it. Altera is built to help merchants and agencies keep up with Shopify as it changes, and your collection exports include every collection in the store. There's a full write-up of [how Altera handles Shopify's new collections](https://support.getaltera.com/en/articles/15945043-how-altera-is-handling-shopify-s-new-collections) in the help center.

## Managing collection sources in bulk with Altera

The new model also raises the ceiling on how much structure a store's collections can carry, and structure at scale is spreadsheet work. With Altera you can export every collection in your store, including how each one is built, review it all in one file, make changes in bulk, and import the file back. That covers jobs like auditing which collections use which rules, restructuring a category tree with subcollections, or moving collections between stores during a migration.

If you have used Matrixify-style spreadsheets before, the format will be familiar but includes extra columns to handle collection sources. The [collection fields reference](https://support.getaltera.com/en/articles/15945044-collection-fields) documents every column in the export.

{{< figure src="/images/collection-sources/altera-collections-export.jpg" alt="An Altera collections export in a spreadsheet, with one row per source and columns for source target, conditions, and hand-picked products" caption="An Altera collections export: the format you're used to but with extra columns to support sources." >}}

{{< app-store-banner text="Import and export the new collections with Altera." >}}

## Frequently asked questions

**Does Shopify support subcollections now?**
Yes. A collection can include other collections as sources, and the parent updates automatically when the child collections change. The old workaround of simulating subcollections with navigation menus is no longer necessary. Note that subcollections only go one level deep: a collection that includes other collections cannot itself be added as a source.

**What happened to smart collections and manual collections?**
The split is gone. Every collection is now built from one or more sources, and each source can hold rules, hand-picked products, other collections, or app-provided product groups. Existing smart and manual collections keep working and carry over as single-source collections.

**Do I need to change my existing collections?**
No. Existing collections, their URLs, and their storefront behavior are unchanged. The new model only matters when you want to use the new capabilities.

**Can a Shopify collection contain specific variants?**
Yes. A source can target variants instead of whole products, so a collection can hold only the red variants or only certain sizes. This was not possible under the old model. Variant selection is inclusion-only, so you can include specific variants but you cannot exclude them.

**What happens when one source excludes a product that another source includes?**
The product stays in the collection. Exclusions only apply inside the source they belong to, so they only remove products that their own source added. If any source includes a product, it is in the collection.

**Why does an app skip some of my collections?**
The app probably has not been updated for the new collections model, which needs the version of Shopify's API released July 1, 2026 (version 2026-07). Shopify hides new-model collections from apps that have not updated, without any error. Check whether the app has announced support for the new collections model, and until it does, treat its collection exports as incomplete.

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See the [Altera vs. Matrixify comparison](/altera-vs-matrixify/) for a full breakdown of the data types each tool covers.